Sara W. Berry
DECEMBER 2, 2018 TUPELO, MISSISSIPPI
I sat with my friend Robin Waldrip as we talked home decor and paint colors, casually sipping our hot afternoon coffee. We had known of each other for years, as we both lived in the idyllic town of Tupelo, Mississippi, and shared many common interests, not the least of which was love of God, country, and family.
Both her sister, Carolyn, and her brother, Lyle, and their families had been my kind neighbors for years. I had watched from afar as snippets of her family’s tremendous story came to me through newspaper articles and my children, who were in school with her nieces and nephews. Her dad, Col. Carlyle Smith “Smitty” Harris, had been held captive as a POW for almost eight years, and he was well respected in our community. I knew bits and pieces of his story, but I had never met the man himself.
On this day in my living room, Robin began to share more details of her family’s story, and I was fascinated. Having read some of my books, Robin asked me if I would consider writing the story in book form. Though flattered, I immediately thought, Me? What do I know about the Vietnam War?
I was not yet born when Smitty was shot down in enemy territory. When he was suffering torture and malnutrition, I was growing up in a loving family, filled with joy and making fun memories, in an even smaller town fifty miles down the road from Tupelo. When Smitty returned home, I was finishing kindergarten. As a writer, I was drawn to this story like a moth to a flame, yet I still wasn’t convinced I was the one to write it.
“You write it, Robin. I have read some of your writing. You can do it! I will help you!”
“It needs to be written by someone who is not so close to it. Someone who can see all the details from far away,” she explained. “At least pray about it.”
I agreed, and we even prayed together right there at my dining room table.
That night, I reached for my Bible and turned to the scheduled reading, which included Jeremiah 30. By the end of the chapter, I was thunderstruck at what I had read.
This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Write in a book all the words I have spoken to you. The days are coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when I will bring my people Israel and Judah back from captivity and restore them to the land I gave their ancestors to possess,’ says the LORD.”
Jeremiah 30:1–3
Stunned, I continued reading as I made my way to chapter 31, verse 8: “See, I will bring them from the land of the north and gather them from the ends of the earth.” Verses 16 and 17 continued in this theme: “‘They will return from the land of the enemy. So there is hope for your descendants,’ declares the LORD.”
These words written thousands of years before seemed a mirror image of what little I knew of the story of Smitty and Louise Harris.
“Okay, Lord. I will do my best,” I prayed.
I will never forget the first of many days I spent on Smitty and Louise’s sofa in north Tupelo. Smitty, now ninety, and Louise, eighty-one, are as sharp and witty as any persons decades younger. Though they sat on opposite couches, I noticed how they looked at each other, as if they were speaking in unison, as one told a snippet and then allowed time for the other to speak. With her beautiful, clear blue eyes and pure, soft white hair, Louise seemed as if she were holding Smitty’s hand just by the way she looked at him across the room when he spoke.
“We get along very well,” Louise commented one day. “We never argue. Why would we waste time on that?” she said, as if it made perfect sense. That small piece of wisdom has etched its way into my own life.
When the inevitable delays in writing came, they were filled with grace and patience. Smitty and Louise approached this project as if they were delighted to share but unconcerned when or if it ever happened. They told me their story with great detail and superb memory. I marveled at their grace. I marveled at their healing. And I marveled at the many times they insisted that the main objective was for people to see that the overall effect has been positive on their lives and the lives of their children and grandchildren. “We are truly blessed in every aspect of our lives. God’s been good to us,” they repeatedly told me.
I took the beginnings of a brilliant account of Smitty’s experiences that he had started writing in the late 1970s but never finished, and I wove in many more details, scenes, and memories that Smitty and Louise told me as we sat in their lovely home. From there I researched websites and articles and read many wonderful books by other POWs. I even had the great honor of having access to the two-volume professional study titled Vietnam POW Camp Histories and Studies, prepared by the Air War College, which was classified information until February 22, 1978.
Though written in story form, this book you hold in your hands is entirely true.
Col. Larry Guarino spoke of Smitty and the Tap Code in his book A P.O.W. Story: 2801 Days in Hanoi, saying, “Neither Smitty Harris nor any of us realized that this would be the most valuable life- and mind-saving piece of information contributed by any prisoner for all the years we were there.”* After reading Tap Code, I hope you will be inspired, as I have been, to emulate the grit, honor, and courage of both Smitty and Louise. Through learning both sides of their story, lived out on opposite sides of the world, I believe you will not only learn important details of American history but also see a glimpse of true and enduring love.
As I tearfully told them one day after a lovely session at their home, I am profoundly honored to have been given the opportunity to help them tell their inspiring, life-changing, true story. It is my great desire that this book will bring honor to both of them, their family, our military men and women in all walks of service, and their families. Most of all, I hope to bring honor to God, who has set me free from my own captivity, just as he has every believing soul. To him be the glory.